We hung on tight as he took a vicious series of lefts and rights. It was a tough job, hanging on, but we didn't mind. "Do it, Bee!" cried Mandy, loving the adventure. Old-style terraces passed by, each side of us. On one of the walls someone had scrawled the words - Das Uberdog. And underneath that - pure is poor. Even I didn't know where we were. That's the Beetle for you. Total knowledge, fuelled by Jam and Vaz. Now he was driving us down a back alley, scraping paint off both sides of the Stashmobile. That's okay. The van could live with that A quick glance through the back windows; there go the cops, speeding on by, towards some dumbfuck nowhere. Bye, bye, suckers! We came out of the alley, and there we were, the Moss Lane East. Beetle took another right, heading us back home.

"Slow down some, Bee," I said.

"Fuck slowness!" he replied, burning the world with his wheels.

"We're like eggs back here, Beetle," said Mandy. And the guy slowed us down, some. Well there you go; some things will slow the Beetle down; the chance of a new woman, for instance. Bridget must have had the same feeling; she was looking daggers at the new girl, smoke rising from her skin, as she tried her best to tune into the Beetle's head. I guess she wasn't getting too far.

No matter.

We were in some kind of easy travelling by now, so I picked up the goody bag, emptying the contents out on to the tartan rug. Five blue Vurt feathers floated down. I caught a few as they drifted, reading the printed labels.

"Thermo Fish!" I said. "Done it."

"How was I to know?" said Mandy.

I read another. "Honey Suckers! Oh my shit! Where is it!?"

"Next time, Scribble," Mandy said, "you go shopping."

"Where's English Voodoo? You promised me. I thought you had contacts?"

"That's what he had."

I read the other three. "Done it. Done it. Not done it, but it sounds boring anyway." I'd let the feathers go in disgust. Now they were floating around inside the van.